


Best Friend

by labocat



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Extra Treat, Gen, ToT: Monster Mash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-24 13:10:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8373454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labocat/pseuds/labocat
Summary: He would do anything for his human, now that they understand each other.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xhorhas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xhorhas/gifts).



The city smelled wrong now. He had noticed his human’s scent change first and he’d tried to warn her, but she’d always been unable to understand his warnings or too slow to heed them. He’d tried to nudge her out of their spaces - she’d smelled sick before and left and come back with things she grimaced and swallowed and he’d stay by her until she smelled right again - this was worse but maybe she’d have something to fix it. But she hadn’t done anything until she collapsed, her friend who stayed the night sometimes rushing to her side. She’d cried out in a way that reminded him of a pack call for a fallen friend, clutching his human’s hand. She’d smelled fine before, but he could smell a faint wrongness about her now as she clutched his human close.

They hadn’t allowed him to follow, no matter how hard he tried to get into the large box with flashing lights they’d loaded his human into. Didn’t they understand he needed to stay by her? Didn’t they understand he helped her relax?

He’d followed them as far as he could, until the smell of the wrongness was so strong he could hardly bear it. He could hardly smell his human underneath all of the decay - why would they bring her here? Didn’t they realize it would only make her worse? Why would no one listen to him?

The only time he could get close was at night, when the human guards were gone but the sense of decay increased until his hackles raised as his tail lowered, no matter how much he wanted to bare his teeth and snap at it and save his human.

Sunlight helped. Less so as the whole city took on scents of panic - prey scents that were undercut by the lurking poison of that wrongness. It wasn’t the decay of a fallen animal returning to the earth; this lingered and made him feel like _he_ was the prey.

Soon the city was quiet and there was no one to chase him from the stone place where they’d taken his human. Her scent was twisted, full of fear and decay and something new and strange, but he would still know it anywhere.

They’d left her on a bed when they’d left. Closer now, he could tell the other beds all had the strange new scent, one of stillness and chemicals and things lurking in the darkness. The smell of decay was lesser here than in other rooms and overwhelmed with finally being reunited with his human, he lay down at the side of her bed once again. Her fingers, slimmer than usual, hung down and he wriggled until they brushed the top of his head. Content, for once he let himself ignore the creeping wrongness of the shadows that fell over the city and lurked in every corner.

She was still stuck, that stagnant smell still lingering, but after he had woken up, things had seemed brighter; what had smelled corrupted was negligible to his senses now. The shadows wavered on the walls and converged around him and he _understood_ in a way he and his human had never been able to understand each other before. She was there, still there, just trapped in a way he couldn’t figure out how to save her. But the others did. And then he knew.

Bring her those that were corrupted, the oozing masses he had avoided before, and she could leave, they could be together again, the new strength in his bones and strengthened senses overpowering his lessening sight. The body he could see wasn’t his human anymore anyway - he didn’t need sight to know she was there with him.

It was harder than he thought, searching further and further away from her for something that suited her needs. Each day he was away from her, the skittering darkness he’d come to accept would try to hunt for itself.

Each day he felt it winning.

It had been so long that the scent of anything unlike him smelled _too_ clean, acrid and stinging his nose like the things his human would use to clean. Maybe this was what she needed, this too sharp, too alive thing that the skittering darkness wanted too.

Then he heard it. A voice, so unlike his own human’s, but triggering a deep response. This new human smelled too clean as well, but he was human and humans had always meant comfort and help.

He lept.

Pain. So much, too much. He howled it out and the thing that had made him strong howled with him. This human was not here to help, he was here to hurt, to cause despair and pain like the humans that had taken his away.

No more.

The thrill of the chase, the scent of prey that thrilled the beast, the speed of legs faster and more numerous than his own, long and thin like his last memory of her fingers.

Then light.

Memories of happier times, of his human and her friend and their friends, scratching that spot under his ears he could never get properly.

He was so far from her, how did he get so far from her?

He had failed her. He had to return to her. The human in front of him wasn’t here to help and his human hadn’t said anything about other humans.

He hurt. The thing inside him hurt too and not for the first time, he hated it. It had led him astray. He wandered the unfamiliar city, trying to find a way back to his human, but the rain washed all the old scents and tracks away.

There was one scent that cut through the rain, that sharp smell of the clean human, in the direction of that light that hurt less than sunlight but still pulled old, painful memories forth.

He should make that human pay. He should, but his strength had fled and with one final small, anguished howl, the one for the death of a pack member, he fell quiet.

 

* * *

 

 

As the pack of ghosts fled the hospital, one turned in a separate direction. She felt called and felt no qualms leaving the rest - she had no allegiance to them other than the timeless frustration of being trapped together and the passed-around knowledge of how to escape if the opportunity ever presented itself.

She stood underneath the tree amid the splayed bones of her friend and mourned. He had failed her - she had given him a second chance and he had failed her and was beyond her reach now.

He was supposed to be her best friend.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween, qichi!
> 
> After this recent chapter, I was really inspired and intrigued by the interplay between ghosts, trolls, and beasts and the possibilities that some of the beasts had been around since the start of it all, and the idea that both the ghosts and dog beasts in particular still hold onto their pain and memories of that time because they haven't moved on lent to some worldbuilding ideas that I hope you like!


End file.
